Monday night of the broadcast networks only CBS touched China and Monday
morning only ABC mentioned the subject. The shows passed along the China
premier's denial of spying at Los Alamos and lashing out at "witch
hunts" and "partisan politics" in the U.S., comments that
sound remarkably similar to Democratic and media attacks on Republicans
from over the weekend.

Monday night no
two shows began alike. ABC led with how car accidents are the biggest
killer of those age 5 to 16, CBS opened with the snowstorm in the
Northeast, CNN's The World Today went first with Kosovo, FNC's Fox
Report led with the controversy over the Holyfield/Lewis boxing match and
NBC topped Nightly News with the deadlock by the Medicare commission.

Only CNN ran a
full story on Gore's presidential announcements in New Hampshire and
Iowa. ABC, CBS and FNC gave it a few seconds while NBC ignored it. World
News Tonight anchor Charles Gibson highlighted how an ABC News/Washington
Post poll found 39 percent are enthusiastic about Gore compared to 55
percent who are enthusiastic about George W. Bush while 56 percent say Al
Gore is boring.

On China, CBS
Evening News anchor John Roberts delivered this 18-second item:
"China's premier today denied that his
country stole U.S. nuclear weapons secrets and he said U.S.-China
relations were being sacrificed to partisan U.S. politics. Premier Zhu
Rongji said an anti-China wave has emerged in the United States which
makes him feel uneasy about his trip here next month."

Monday morning,
March 15, Jim Laurie concluded a 7am news update story from Beijing, about
Zhu Rongji's speech denying China stole secrets or needed to and how
China is disappointed by how relations are deteriorating, by noting:
"...While Chinese officials expressed
disappointment, the media here is less diplomatic. One official commentary
accuses the U.S. Congress of an anti-China witch hunt."

Does the communist
Chinese reasoning sound familiar? Maybe they picked it up by satellite
from the U.S. media. As reported in the March 15 CyberAlert, on Inside
Washington over the weekend Newsweek's Evan Thomas charged: "I'm
suspicious of the Republicans here. I think they're trying to make some
political hay. It feels like 'who lost China?' and a lot of witch
hunts of the past where they see a chance to make some political capital
by us not being tough enough. I don't think that's true."

Put more people in prison and the crime rate goes down. Sounds logical,
but MRC analyst Jessica Anderson noticed that it baffled a ABC News
reporter who called the simultaneous trends of a rising prison population
and falling crime rate "a seeming contradiction."

Picking up a study
publicized by the liberal Sentencing Project, on Monday's Good Morning
America news reader Antonio Mora announced: "Despite a drop in crime
rates, a new study says the nation's prison population is still growing
rapidly. Only Russia has a higher percentage of its people behind
bars."

In the subsequent
story Jim Sciutto outlined the findings and asserted how he found them
contradictory:
"According to a new study by the Justice
Department, the number of U.S. residents behind bars has doubled in just a
dozen years. Last year it increased more than four percent. As of
mid-1998, one in every 150 Americans was incarcerated. All this while
crime rates have fallen. The reason for the seeming contradiction is that
prisons are feeling the effects of get-tough-on-crime policies, like
truth-in-sentencing initiatives designed to make inmates serve more of
their terms."

Leading into a
soundbite from a Sentencing Project staffer, Sciutto declared: "The
result is a bill for taxpayers of about $20,000 per year per inmate,
roughly the same as a year's tuition at a private university. Some groups
critical of the trend towards incarceration say that money would be better
spent on prevention, like drug treatment programs."

Sciutto concluded
by reflecting the view of the Sentencing Project that so many in prison is
a failure not a success: "Still, getting tough on crime is so popular
with voters these days that some say mustering the political will to
change the trend towards imprisonment will not be easy."

FNC: From Hillary Clinton enemy to ally? Last week the White House
condemned Rita Cosby's FNC's exclusive about how the Clintons fought
during their ski weekend and how Hillary did not accompany her husband to
Central America because, a source quoted Hillary as saying, "I
don't want to be in the same room with him, let alone the same
bed."

What a difference
a Senate race makes. Monday night Cosby was back with news about how
Hillary and her friends realize such stories may benefit her. Cosby opened
her Fox Report story by showing Hillary Clinton's warm welcome Monday at
a womens equality summit and allowing Eleanor Smeal to praise her.

Cosby then
reported: "As she focuses on her own political aspirations, friends
close the First Lady tell Fox News she is purposely distancing herself
from the President and his scandals." After Hotline Editor Craig
Crawford observed that "Hillary Clinton has put more distance between
herself and Bill Clinton than Al Gore has and she's married to
him," Cosby recalled her disclosure about the fight and noted how Joe
Lockhart refused to comment about it or Hillary's political plans.

Cosby concluded
with this new twist on her disclosure about the Clintons:
"Friends of the Clintons who've spoken to
both of them tell Fox News that at first the Clintons were livid at our
report about their marital spat and the First Lady's sense of
estrangement toward her husband. But now they tell friends that the
publicity may be helpful in Mrs. Clinton's quest to develop her
credibility among women voters."

Check out what
Cosby looks and sounds like. Since most cable subscribers still can't
watch FNC, as a public service the MRC has posted on our Web site a
RealPlayer clip of this story so you can see a FNC story and hear the
reporter who first broke the story about how the Clintons are not getting
along. Go to: http://www.mrc.org

Promoting Hillary for Senate. Last Friday, March 12, Good Morning America
co-host Diane Sawyer delivered a lengthy puff piece on how wonderful it
would be if Hillary Clinton would run for the Senate in New York since she
deserves the personal victory. Sawyer concluded her tribute in the guise
of a news report:
"So her friends say she has really earned
this campaign, this moment, if she chooses, earned it by changing herself,
searching, stumbling, and at the end, by standing, not by her man, but by
herself."

MRC analyst
Jessica Anderson took down much of Sawyer's gleeful advocacy for Hillary
Clinton:
"Well, the momentum is really building for
Hillary Rodham Clinton to run for the Senate in New York. She has
apparently said that she's thinking about forming an exploratory
committee, and friends who previously expressed doubt are now saying they
think she just might do it. But you have to keep in mind that it would be
the first time in decades that she's campaigned for anyone but her
husband; in fact, since they married. And he talked about the proposal
once in a campaign video."
Bill Clinton, from the 1992 campaign video:
"And I drove her back, and I said, 'You know, I bought that house you
liked.' She said, 'What?' I said, 'That house you liked, I bought it, so
you'd better marry me 'cause I can't live in this big house by
myself.'"
Sawyer: "She said yes, and a year later,
they celebrated their first political victory: Bill Clinton, state
Attorney General. She was only 31 years old when he was elected Governor,
and thought that she could keep her fierce independence. She called
herself Hillary Rodham, she practiced law, and defied anyone to make her
glamorize to get votes. This is when a pattern emerged that would haunt
her for the next 20 years. 1980, he lost the election, some of the blame
fell on her, so she transformed herself into Mrs. Clinton and sought to
satisfy the public insistence on style.... And that's what would happen in
the presidential primary of 1992. He the charming campaigner, she the
single-minded strategist. Her bravery helped him weather the scandal, but
her boldness made voters pull back....It was as if she had to be two
Hillary Rodham Clintons: the one with the big laugh and the girlish
impulses, and the tough-as-nails strategist, the first candidate's wife
ever to be openly attacked by the opposition at their convention."
Pat Buchanan, 1992 Republican convention:
"Hillary has compared marriage and the family, as institutions, to
slavery and life on an Indian reservation." [crowd boos in response]
Sawyer: "As in Arkansas, once again she
pulled back, toned down, seemed to be just a woman at her husband's side,
and in the White House, she had to do the same thing all over again. She
emerged on health care, only to beat a very bruised retreat. She clearly
hated being thought of as just Bill Clinton's wife. But ironically, it
would take his scandals, finally, to free her. Finally, last November
1998, Hillary Clinton showed the world what she could do on the campaign
trail without him. Political mastery, every bit as dazzling as his, the
thoughtful speech, unapologetically strong, emboldening Democrats,
electing senators. So her friends say she has really earned this campaign,
this moment, if she chooses, earned it by changing herself, searching,
stumbling, and at the end, by standing, not by her man, but by
herself."

Hillary's Senate
campaign won't have to produce a promotional video. They can just borrow
Sawyer's.

Time's goofy puffballs to Monica Lewinsky. Catching up on an item from
last week, as the MRC's Tim Graham noted in a Media Reality Check fax
report last week, the March 15 Time cover story interview with Lewinsky
included some truly goofy questions. Time Washington Bureau Chief Michael
Duffy, who conducted the interview, at one point queried in reference to
Bill Clinton: "What do you think his sadness is?"

And check out this
exchange between Duffy and Lewinsky:
Time: "You're probably the most famous woman
in the world right now.
Lewinsky: "Unfortunately."
Time: "What is that like to wake up
with?"
Lewinsky: "I don't think people can imagine
what it feels like to have nightmares and in your dreams -- or your
nightmare -- you've left a house without a hat..."
Time: "Some people dream about being naked,
and you dream about being...?"
Lewinsky: "Without my hat. Without
sunglasses, without some sort of protection. It's having to plan not only
where I'm going [but] when I'm going, with whom I'm going. Who will be
there? How close can I get my car to where I'm going? Can I get a taxi
easily?"

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